59 years ago today, Austria hosted the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, staging the event in Vienna. As the city prepares to host for the third time in the coming weeks, this first Austrian edition offers a look at a contest in transition and marked the United Kingdom’s first victory.
Imperial hosting in a changing era
Faced with the challenge of hosting the Contest after its 1966 victory, Austrian broadcaster ORF chose a setting that ended up being quite iconic: the Festival Hall of the Hofburg Palace. This was the former seat of Habsburg imperial power in the center of Vienna. Decades after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the palace once again became a cultural center for a Europe that was, relatively-speaking, mostly at peace despite the Cold War.
Changing times in Eurovision
It is commonplace to describe any Eurovision year as a reflection of changing times, especially in the 1960s. But 1967 fits the bill in more ways than one, reflecting changes in Europe as well as in the Contest.
Austria’s hosting, after Denmark’s in 1964 and Italy’s in 1965, continued a departure from what was mainly a Western Europe decade in terms of hosting, and Vienna became the most eastern host city at the time. The eventual victory of Sandie Shaw for the United Kingdom would also continue weakening the domination of a French-speaking bloc, and put a modern pop sound back at the forefront, two years after France Gall’s triumph with “Poupée de cire, poupée de son.”
But Vienna ended up hosting Eurovision because of a very different winner, “sandwiched” in history between these two pop champions: Udo Jürgens. After two attempts in 1964 and 1965, when he finished 6th and 4th respectively with piano ballads, Jürgens sent… another piano ballad, that did manage to win this time, “Merci Chérie.”
The 1967 Contest opened with an orchestra performance of Johann Strauss’ “Viennese Blood” waltz, under the direction of Johannes Fehring. But before the performance could conclude, Udo Jürgens appeared and replaced Fehring on the stand, directing the orchestra to perform a waltz version of “Merci Chérie.”
This was not the first orchestra reprise of the previous year’s winning song, but it was, in a broad sense, the first time a Eurovision winner had “performed” their victory song in some capacity to open the following Contest. Jürgens did not sing, though, and the first winner to actually sing his entry a year after victory was Johnny Logan in 1988.
Crossroads of colours
Vienna 1967 also represented the end of an era in Eurovision: that of black-and-white production. Starting with London 1968, the Contest would be produced entirely in colour.
It is almost poetic that the last two monochrome contests would also be the stage for the inclusion of some of the first people of colour on the Eurovision stage. In 1966, in Luxembourg, Sweden had brought the first black performer on stage, Shahib Shihab, who played the flute for Lill Lindfors and Svante Thuresson. A few songs later on the same evening, Millie Scott became the first black singer to perform at the Contest, with “Fernando en Philippo,” for the Netherlands.
In Vienna, it was Portugal’s turn to send a black performer, Eduardo Nascimento, from Angola, who became the first black male singer in the Contest’s history. Singing “O Vento Mudou,” he received 3 points, finishing tied for 12th out of 17 participants.
Denmark’s departure and the reduced line-up
With 17 participants, Eurovision 1967 was also the first edition with fewer entries than the previous one. There had been non-returning countries before (such as the UK in 1958 or Sweden in 1964), but new or returning participants had kept the line-up growing. After two years with 18 entries, Vienna only had 17.
The missing country was Denmark. Niels Jørgen Kaiser, the new head of entertainment at DR (Denmark’s public broadcaster), did not consider Eurovision to have enough quality as an entertainment broadcast, and thus DR did not participate in 1967. The Nordic country did not return until 1978, when a new head of entertainment took over; this was the longest hiatus for a country at the time.
Otherwise, the line-up was representative of the mid-1960s in the Contest, although only 12 of the 17 participants will be present in 2026. Among the missing ones are Yugoslavia and Monaco, but also Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands.
Eurovision legends from Vienna 1967
Just like today, the contests of the 1960s had returning artists. With hindsight, we also know that some debuting artists would return to the Contest later. These are some of those participants from Eurovision history.
Vicky (🇱🇺 Luxembourg)
Only using her first name at the time, Vicky Leandros represented Luxembourg in Vienna and went on to win the Contest five years later, in 1972, with “Après Toi,” again for the Grand Duchy. Greek-born, she built a career spanning decades in her birth nation as well as in German- and French-speaking countries, the UK and Japan.
Her 1967 entry, “L’amour est bleu” (Love Is Blue), was an early example of a non-winner achieving commercial success (although not necessarily with Vicky’s version) and will be honoured in May during the opening sequence of the first semi-final.
Raphael (🇪🇸 Spain)
A multi-awarded alumnus of the original Benidorm Festival in the early 1960s, Raphael took part in Eurovision two years in a row, in 1966 and 1967, finishing 7th and 6th respectively, the best results at the time for Spain, paving the way for the 1968 Spanish victory by Massiel.
After “Yo soy aquél” in Luxembourg, Raphael brought “Hablemos del amor” to Vienna and confirmed his international stature. In a field of mostly stage performers, he knew how to play to the camera, and his international career grew afterward, becoming one of the biggest names in Latin ballads, alongside singers like Julio Iglesias and Nino Bravo.
Kirsti Sparboe (🇳🇴 Norway)
Kirsti Sparboe was the definitive Norwegian Eurovision artist in the 1960s, participating in five editions of Melodi Grand Prix in a row. At the time, each entry was performed by two different artists: a jury selected the winning entry, and one of the two artists was chosen later. She won in 1965, 1967, 1968 and 1969, although her 1968 entry had to be withdrawn (she was also singing the runner-up, “Stress,” but was not chosen again to perform it at Eurovision).
This left her with three Eurovision participations, in 1965, 1967 and 1969. In a symmetrical pattern, she earned 1, 2 and 1 point respectively. Although her best score came in Vienna with “Dukkeman,” she finished one place lower than in Naples 1965, placing 14th instead of 13th.
Not content with these participations, Sparboe also tried to represent Germany in 1970 (with Norway not participating that year) but finished fourth in the national selection.
Louis Neefs (🇧🇪 Belgium)
Another artist who would return in Madrid 1969 was Belgium’s Louis Neefs. A Flemish singer, he first participated in Vienna with a performance of “Ik heb zorgen,” which finished 7th, just as his 1969 entry “Jennifer Jennings” would.
Neefs became the first 1967 singer to pass away, killed in a car accident on Christmas Day 1980 at the age of 43. His Eurovision legacy remains, and was revisited last year when his grandson, Lenn, took part in Belgium’s national selection “Eurosong.” During the preview rounds, Lenn covered both of his grandfather’s songs, adapting “Ik heb zorgen” by changing the pronouns to reflect a male subject.
There would be much more to say about the 1967 artists, but this article’s purpose is not to exhaustively explain everything about that Contest. We still need to mention the last two artists with multiple participations: Claudio Villa from Italy, who returned after a first attempt in 1962, and Fredi from Finland, who later came back with his band Fredi & Friends in 1976.
The final results
New voting rules
After the introduction, the 17 acts performed, starting with the Netherlands and closing with Ireland. They were followed by a short interval act by the Wiener Sängerknaben (Vienna Boys’ Choir), and then came the voting, supervised by Clifford Brown, who had to assist host Erica Vaal when she became confused several times during the process, partly due to delays from the scoreboard operators.
After several experiments with voting systems in the mid-1960s, the Contest returned to the original 1957 system, in which each juror awarded a single point to their favorite entry. National juries had 10 members, half of whom had to be under 30 under a new rule. Fifty-nine years later, the the EBU will introduce a similar rule for Vienna 2026, with some variations, requiring 2 of 7 jurors to be aged between 18 and 25.
The results
The voting was not particularly close. The United Kingdom secured its first victory with little suspense, earning 47 of 160 possible points, well ahead of runner-up Ireland, which had 22 points. France finished third with 20 points, and Luxembourg placed fourth with 17. The British victory was actually announced before the Irish jury could deliver its results.
Interestingly, despite the margin of victory, Sandie Shaw did not receive any points from Spain or Yugoslavia and received only 1 point from Ireland.
Even more interestingly, voting patterns also varied widely. Norway’s jurors awarded points to only three countries: 7 to the UK, 2 to Sweden and 1 to Germany. In contrast, Portugal gave points to nine different countries, with two jurors selecting Spain and the other eight each voting for a different entry.
The first British victory
With this win, Sandie Shaw brought the United Kingdom its first Eurovision victory and the right to host the Contest as reigning champion for the first time, after two previous hostings on behalf of other winners. “Puppet on a String” had been selected through a postcard vote during a national selection in which Shaw performed five songs. “Puppet on a String” was her least preferred option, but it became a major success.
With more than 4 million copies sold worldwide, the song became the most successful winning entry in the Contest’s history at the time.
59 years have gone by, and the Contest has endured to this day, through geopolitical challenges and a worldwide pandemic, ready to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Many things have changed: from an exclusive event of tuxedos in black and white, the contest has become a colourful multi-camera broadcast in the highest possible definitions, held in giant concert halls, with twice as many participants and a global reach. But the seeds of all of this can still be found in these older editions, like Vienna 1967.
Have you ever watched the 1967 contest online (or, perhaps, on TV)? Which song was your favourite? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media!
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